


Last Dance

by Eisengrave, selwyn



Series: Gifts from the Divine [HashiMada RP Collection] [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, lbr this would have been nice, to see that old powercouple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 04:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30066453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisengrave/pseuds/Eisengrave, https://archiveofourown.org/users/selwyn/pseuds/selwyn
Summary: In which Madara has an additional rinne rebirth in mind and Hashirama has a thing or two to say about it.
Relationships: Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: Gifts from the Divine [HashiMada RP Collection] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2211912
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Last Dance

What he wouldn’t give to be a better sensor right now. 

The battlefield had grown quiet, desolate around him. Perhaps it had simply moved, beyond the ridge, to the towering pillar of unnaturally grown wood. Perhaps the fate of the world was being decided in the shadow of that bulbous, tumor-like flower atop the tower. It wouldn’t do to call it a tree. Not after he’d seen the monster that it sprang from.

Madara was out there, playing out whatever plan he’d dreamed up in his long years of secret life. Hashirama, for the first time since he could think, powerless to stand against him.

It felt strange, to have no choice about it. The reanimation lingered and he could not release it, not with the black rods that still pierced his back.

All he could do was sit and watch the world gasp and struggle, writhing to prolong its last breath in the suffocating grip of Madara’s madness.

The eye of the God Tree stared at the moon and the moon stared back. In its splendor, Madara beheld the final stages of his plan. Soon. It was all going to finish soon. Thirteen minutes later, a new age would dawn on this damned world. No more fighting. No more violence. Only sleep.

Despite the approaching end, Madara couldn’t stop looking east. His eyes kept being drawn to it. He felt drawn to it. Hashirama was there, was still there since Madara siphoned some of his chakra. He lingered on the edge of his senses like a siren call, calling him every time his attention threatened to move away.

Thirteen minutes left. It would be better to wait. But he didn’t want to.

With a flicker of movement, he abandoned the battlefield. Let the mice struggle. Hashirama mattered more.

Madara smiled once he saw him kneeling in the desolation of this old battlefield, still held in place by the chakra rods. Kind of them to leave him like this, as convenient as a present. He liked to think that Hashirama knew he was going to come back sooner or later.

“Rather rude of them to leave you behind after you worked so hard.”

The time for barbs and pleasantries had long since passed. Hashirama didn’t wish to speak with Madara, knew his words would do nothing to change the outcome. Words, somehow, never managed to solve anything between them. The only words Madara accepted as truth were fists, or blades. 

If Madara was here, the boys…no, Naruto and Sasuke, they couldn’t have failed. They shouldn’t have. Were they dead? He hoped not. He hoped that somewhere deep down, Madara remembered the man he once was. A man that didn’t slaughter children for standing up for their beliefs. 

It was a fickle hope, he had no delusion about that. Madara had already slaughtered hundreds here. Maybe even thousands.

No words. Madara stepped up behind him and waited but Hashirama persisted in his silence. He tilted his head to the side.

“Nothing to say? That’s unexpected.” He reached out and cradled his head, stroking his hair as he slowly circled him. He stopped in front of him and crouched.

Hashirama looked tired with all those cracks in his face, but still handsome. Madara touched one of the cracks and the skin flaked away, the material underneath flat and grey.

“I always thought Tobirama’s technique was so unpolished,” he murmured, smoothing his hand down his pauldron. “This stagnant kind of existence is an insult to you. But don’t worry. I won’t leave you like this.”

Madara tucked Hashirama’s hair behind his ear and allowed himself to feel fond. It was indulgent, giving into emotion when he wasn’t even done, but he could never hold back when it came to him. “I wish I could’ve fought you a little longer. That was the most fun I’ve had in years.” 

If he could, Hashirama would move away from Madara’s new, strange touch. Now that he’d circled him, his full appearance was known to Hashirama’s flaking eyes. 

White, pale as the moon. It was an alien look on Madara’s body. His mane was the ashen trail of a comet, his eyes an offensive purple now. He barely held onto Madara’s shape, this new creature.

Hashirama’s gaze lifted.

“What is left for you to take from me, Madara?”

“There’s always more.”

The struggle beyond the ridge continued. Madara planted his staff in the cracked earth and sat down. “I didn’t expect them to bring you back but now I wonder why I was even surprised. The universe always brought you to me in the end.”

A part of him wanted to pull the rods out of him. Hashirama wasn’t a man born to kneel. But he knew better. There was time for that later.

“I’m going to finish the job they started,” he murmured, sliding his finger down his jaw, “and bring you back properly. I always intended to do that, just not so soon. But no matter. You won’t be trapped in that shape anymore.”

“I will fight you.”

Hashirama made no attempt at deception. Madara knew him too well to think that he would do anything else with a true, living body. And just like Madara, it would be a vast difference to the reanimation.

Even if Madara had become something strange and unknown to Hashirama, there existed no version of him that could accept the end of the world readily.

Even if he couldn’t beat Madara anymore. He would rather die trying than accept this poison dream.

Madara smirked. “I look forward to it.”

The time for the Tsukuyomi trickled down. Madara grabbed Hashirama and gently laid him down on his lap, even though he wouldn’t feel any pain if he just knocked him over. It’d been years since he saw him. The thrill of the fight had been good but he missed this too, being able to touch Hashirama and sit in the warmth of his presence. He’d ached for it for a lifetime. Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop himself from brushing his fingers over him, just to marvel at finally feeling him again.

It would be even better once he was alive. Madara felt a thrill at the thought.

“Once this is done, you’ll understand that I was right. Then we won’t have to fight any longer. It’s what we both want, Hashirama. Peace not only for the world, but for us.”

He had no choice in the position; the rods still immobilized him in every way. Hashirama’s hair fell over his face until Madara brushed it back. 

For just one moment, temptation called out to Hashirama, loud and clear.

_Give up. It’s over. You did all you could._

It would be so easy. Madara had done everything, had prepared for years, executed his plan, overcame all that stood in his way. What good had Hashirama’s defiance brought him, when it came to standing against Madara?

A friendship shattered. A dream lost. And now, more children are slaughtered at the hands of circumstances Hashirama had instrumented.

He was so tired of fighting.

“Will it be that, then? Just you and I, the world asleep?”

“We used to talk about it. Do you remember?” He used to daydream about it, to only exist in that painless, perfect world and never have to leave. To have Hashirama at his side and not keep any secrets from him. To just… be. “We’d dream about what we could do, where we could go. All the things we could see.”

Madara brushed his finger over the proud line of Hashirama’s brow and looked down at him. Affection softened his harsh face.

“It wouldn’t hurt any of them, you know. They will all just go to sleep. Whatever they want, they will have. And isn’t that kinder, to sleep than to suffer?”

“No.”

Hashirama couldn’t give over. As much as he loved the thought of rest and a permanent reunion with Madara. As much as he wanted the world to be an easy fix. He could not betray everything he’d lived for like that. And if Madara only remembered his own truth, he wouldn’t ask it of Hashirama.

“But I am relieved to see that I was not the only one who mixed up his priorities.” 

He sighed, “You’ve grown too cynical to know madness from salvation. I grieve for my friend…you are no longer him.”

“Maybe not. Can anyone be the same after losing everything?”

He had seen too much. Felt too much. Eternal sleep sounded like the kindest paradise possible now. Let this sham of a world no longer exist. Let everything sink inside a dream. Pain didn’t exist in the void.

“It’s too late now,” Madara murmured, turning his face up to the cold moon. It seemed larger now. Closer. It would be the silent guardian for the quiet world he would make.

“All I want… is to rest at your side. And I will, even if I have to drown the world.” He laid his cold hand on Hashirama’s chest, over where his heart would be. “This is the only peace humanity can have.”

His hand began to glow. The god of death didn’t deserve Hashirama’s soul. Overhead, the moon began to bleed.

Searing heat was the first thing Hashirama felt. It shouldn’t have hurt. He’d been torn apart, burned, exploded, all in one day, and none of it had been more noticeable than a scuffed knee.

This? This was agony, pushed into his chest, into his dead flesh, into his bones. Madara’s hand was a white-hot blaze and it burned away Hashirama’s unliving form.

What was he doing? Destroying the reanimated body would only hold for so long before it reformed. And why did he feel like he was pushing something into the inferno in Hashirama’s chest?

The first beat of his heart was a wet, soft sensation. As if it had been misplaced and now wished to jump from his throat.

Hashirama took a ragged breath. Air and dust rattled through his lungs. Beneath him, the dead earth came to life.

Life bloomed from Hashirama. It flushed through his skin, warmed him, made him, rebirthed him, violent and beautiful. Madara tore through the barrier that guarded the dead and stole his soul from its eternal rest. It burned like white lightning in his hand, the power of all creation in its searing heat.

The false life of Edo Tensei crumbled apart for the real. It felt like the world trembled on its axis from the force of it. The blinding light of Hashirama’s chakra, whole once more, nearly blinded Madara.

The dead ground cracked and split as trees forced themselves through. They writhed frantically, dripping with new growth, so green that they gleamed in the moon’s pale light. Vines curled around their heaving roots and flowers, heavy and riotous, grew in the spaces in between. It didn’t stop. It couldn’t. Everything became green as the forest surged from the deep earth.

Madara threw his head back and roared with laughter, delighted. There was light everywhere he could see, the forest in all his senses, the thudding, bursting force of life burning under his hand. This was no equivalent exchange, the exchange of one soul for another. This was true resurrection forged from divine power.

It was like nothing Hashirama had ever known. Every tiny part of him was full, ready to burst, and yet, lighter than air. It was his chakra, in a way he’d never felt it before. Rushing through him, over him, swallowing him up like a tidal wave, with no mercy.

His limbs burned, cooled, turned from ash to flesh, from dry flakes to skin and bone. And through each of them, the chakra wave surged, swamping new life with the infused power that had been compared to a god. Had been called a god. Now would stand in the presence of real gods.

Hashirama was moving up. To his feet, to his knees, his fingers splayed on his thighs, twitching, stretching, curling. Each press against his own palm had the ground produce more confused greenery.

Real air circled through his lungs. Real blood flowed in his veins, every bit as alive as Madara had been. 

His dreadful resurrection, come at a price the world should never have had to pay. And yet, Hashirama savoured the way he could taste ash and fire on his tongue, the way the harsh breeze haunting this empty battlefield cooled the new skin on his face.

“You’re a wretched fool, Madara.”

The rods, previously lodged so deeply in his back, clattered on the ground. Madara’s laughter still rang in his ears.

Madara, who, in his eagerness, hadn’t done a damned thing to inhibit Hashirama’s real strength. Madara, who, his vanity, had restored his only rival to his prime. 

The joy that surged through him lit up his nerves like a head surge. Madara felt himself smiling so hard that his face ached, a fierce, possessive hunger mounting inside him. If he could have, he would have hugged his thighs and let himself be seared by his overwhelming chakra. He’d done this. Not even life and death had meaning for him anymore.

“I love you too,” he said. Then he raised his hand and summoned the power of the Deva path.

The newly-resurrected Hashirama was crushed into the ground by an invisible force. Madara didn’t let up. He knew what Hashirama was capable of. And the time for that wasn’t ready yet. Madara still had other work to do.

The King of Hell’s face emerged from the ground next to Hashirama. Chains shot out of its mouth and pierced him to anchor themselves around his soul. The heavy miasma of chakra in the air began to thin as Madara drank it in, giddy at the feeling of pulling more of Hashirama inside himself.

“I’m not stupid enough to let you loose now,” he said as he slowly walked over to Hashirama. Eagerness writhed inside him at seeing him bound but no, he had to wait. He would taste all his rewards soon enough. “I still have to deal with my kinsman and that blond brat. So you need to wait.”

Like some kind of prized cattle, Hashirama was chained for safekeeping. He understood exactly what Madara wanted, and it sickened him to think that here, his full strength wouldn’t be enough. Madara was not himself anymore, he’d become some otherworldly creature. They no longer resided on the same plain of existence.

And yet.

_I love you too._

He spoke it so sincerely, as if he still believed it true. How far was his mind deteriorated by the mad beast that took hold of him? Hashirama felt nothing but ashen grief, both for the world and Madara. The spring air turned to dead, dry winter once more as Hashirama found himself bound. 

No, not cattle. A prize itself, a present, waiting to be toyed with until Madara inevitably grew tired of being alone in the world with Hashirama.

“You won’t even show your own blood mercy. You’ve truly become every bit the monster you look now.”

* * *

Madara grabbed the Kyuubi boy by the face and slammed him into the ground. Traces of the bijuu’s chakra lingered around him, protecting him from the moon’s influence, but not for long. His hand began to glow as he called on the Kyuubi to return to him once and for all.

It was just when orange fur began to emerge from his chest that two chakra signatures flared too close for him to ignore. Sasuke stabbed the ground where he’d been crouched and Madara had to withdraw, cutting off the technique. The Kyuubi sunk back into the blond brat.

“You little nuisance,” he murmured, his head turning towards Hashirama. So that’s where he ran off to. “Stay out of this, Hashirama,” Madara said. He slowly stood up. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You, turning down an opportunity to fight? Now I know you’re definitely no longer the real Madara.”

Hashirama’s tone was too serious for his own joke, as was his expression. Raw strength might not mean victory this time, and only a fool brawled with something he didn’t understand. Madara’s face was being worn as a mask by some ghostly thing in his skin. The chakra felt odd too, nothing like the fiery blaze he’d grown so familiar with.

He put himself in the space between Madara and the two young men defending the world. Giving them a respite would be a good first step. All he had to do was concentrate Madara’s attention on himself. 

“I cannot not fight you. You never leave me any other choice.”

“I intended to save this for later,” Madara said, “but if you insist…” Sasuke barely got Naruto out of the way in time when Madara pounced. “… I’ll oblige!”

With Naruto, he had been impersonal, preferring to use his Susano’o and maintain distance. With Hashirama, he didn’t hold back. He was faster in this new body. Stronger. Better. Before, keeping up with Hashirama had always required the most out of him. Now, he was the one who had the physical edge.

“Things are different now,” he said, the black flames of Amaterasu bursting to life around his feet, “I’m the stronger one now, Hashirama. Accept it, or be crushed!”

What a strange sensation, to know Madara could outdo him, no matter how hard he pushed. Hashirama didn’t find himself unsettled, just sort of..curious. Honestly there wasn’t much room to give his feelings space and time, not when Madara was forcing his hand and making their fight as personal as possible. 

Then again, the plan was never to pummel Madara into submission. That hadn’t worked a century ago, either.

He defended, without ever moving to attack.

“Is that what you want? To crush me? Is that why you brought me back?”

“I wouldn’t have to do this if you just butted out,” Madara snapped. Fire devoured the trees that Hashirama summoned to block him. His attention was split three ways, the brats taking advantage of their new ally, but Madara wasn’t pressed enough to summon clones.

“It’s too late, don’t you see that? I’ve already made my world. You’re fighting a losing battle.” The flames of Amaterasu continued to hungrily devour everything in its path as Madara hemmed Hashirama in. After all that work he put in to bring him back, he didn’t want to hurt him. All he needed to do was pin him down again. This time around, neither of the brats would get close enough to release him. “Don’t you see it? I’ve brought peace to the world. Why do you want to destroy that?”

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

Hashirama stood his ground. He wasn’t trying to overwhelm Madara. Trees sprouted wherever Madara burned them away. An entire forest writhed between them.

“I could never be at peace with you like this. Look at yourself. Look at this world. It’s worthless. The antics of a child trying their hand at playing a god over an empty world where no one can argue with you. If this is really what you want, Madara, I’m thoroughly disappointed.”

“Is your solution better?” he retorted. “Nations going to war, children’s corpses on battlefields, is all that blood worth it just to pretend freedom exists?”

For a moment, the battle ceased. Madara stood in the middle of a burning ring of black flames, smoking pouring from his hands. The wind blew and swept his white robes to the side.

“No one is free, Hashirama. We are born, we are slaves. At least this doesn’t pretend to be anything else. After a lifetime of deceit, I am tired of being told to accept reality. There is no reality. There is only what is made.”

He held his hand out. For a moment, the harshness of his face softened into something close to beseeching. “I just want this world to be less cruel. Why won’t you see that, my love?”

“I see you, deceiving even yourself with your comfortable lie.” Hashirama truly pitied Madara, for all of his loneliness and desperation. If he could turn back the hands of the clock, he would try harder to get him to speak. No more brushing off Madara’s paranoid delusions as harmless; they’d caused a cataclysmic lapse of judgement within his friend and lover turned bitter enemy once more.

“The world won’t be any different, just because you’ve had it close its eyes. That’s why I can’t accept this, Madara. It’s no more a solution than my village. Change doesn’t come at the snap of a finger, or with force. The world has already changed, right before your eyes. You just need to let it continue.”

It was evident in the shinobi of this time; though they knew hardship, they were no longer forged out of the same, unforgiving circumstances that had produced their ancestors. They felt…less, and maybe that was a good sign. That they didn’t have to live by the fact that only the strong survive. 

“This world of shinobi doesn’t need you, or me, to guide it, Madara. So why are you trying so hard? Who will thank you?”

“Because I don’t believe it will change. This world will fall if there is no one to guide it. Violence lives inside all of us. We all destroy what we love. That’s the only truth that endures these lies… nothing ever lasts.”

When Hashirama didn’t come closer, Madara’s face shuttered once more. He withdrew his hand, his eyes shadowed. “I will make something that is permanent,” he muttered, no longer looking at him. He saw something else instead – a body, thin and pale, slowly consumed by flames.

“Loss will never exist again. I won’t allow it.”

“Loss only comes from knowing love,” Hashirama shook his head, readied himself for another bout, yet still made no plan to retaliate or strike. This was the most sense he had gotten out of Madara in more than a century. He could hardly afford to forsake it now, even if reasoning was never their best form of communication.

“Madara, this plan of yours can never last. Will you just have the world sleep and dream until they die? Until you’re truly alone? What is the point of all of this? You might as well kill every shinobi to ever exist, if you think this,” he indicated the enormous roots and branches with their sleeping fruit, “is peace. You’ve lost your mind.”

“Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t. It’s all the same, isn’t it?” They were all animals scraping in the dirt, trying to make sense of a world that was too big and cold to survive in alone. Madara shrugged. He’d been called insane for so long that he didn’t care anymore. He was insane, existence was insane, everything was insane.

The only thing that mattered was what you made of it.

“In the end, you lose what matters… and you look for something to fill that void. But that ends too. And you lose yourself.” Madara looked down at his black palms. “This… is the real end.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Hashirama was running out of time and patience. Madara remained as convinced of his terrible cause as ever, and even Hashirama’s brand of faith began to waver. Would he kill Madara again, if he had the chance?

It was shaping up to be a hauntingly familiar answer.

One last attempt for sense. It may too be in vain.

“You have the power of life and death in your hand. You brought me back. What’s stopping you from bringing back those you lost and helping the world with what you know, rather than banishing it to a worthless dream?”

“I…” He clenched his fists. “It wouldn’t work. It never has. We saw what happened when I tried. It’s not…”

He shook his head. The power of the Juubi sometimes made it hard to focus, or think, it was so overwhelming. It was a little better when he was fighting, constantly expending energy. Standing around, talking like this… it made his head hurt.

It’s not possible. It will all end the same way. I am the savior of this world.

“The God Tree will fix it. Just… let it. Let me. I will fix it.”

Hesitation.

Just a tiny fragment, a beat missed, and Hashirama knew Madara had almost listened. He knew that sort of tremor, that interrupted cycle; he’d seen it time and time again when he first became head of the Senju and offered Madara truce and an alliance, time and time again.

Good. It was a relief to know he still understood a fragment of Madara’s mind.

“Are you in control, or is it?” Hashirama moved forward, slow, hands at his sides, no weapon in hand, no sign to weave, “Because you never needed anyone to guide you towards what was right. It’s what made you such a good leader, Madara. It was one of the things I admired most about you. It’s only when you listen to spiteful voices that you start to lose sight of what matters.”

“I have always been in control,” he snapped. “I know… I know I’m doing right. This is the only way. People don’t change otherwise, they can’t, true happiness can only be found in the union of Uchiha and Senju…”

_I am… the savior of this world. This rotten, wretched, hideous –_

Madara looked up and saw Hashirama take a step towards him. He stepped back on instinct, ready for his assault, too used to barely holding up against him, but nothing came.

_\- cruel, deceiving, useless -_

“Two forces in opposition will always be in conflict. We… will always be in conflict. True peace is not possible. Only the peace you force. That’s how it is. How it will be.”

_\- ungrateful, thieving world._

“You once said that you understand it in a different way. Is it so impossible to think that it wasn’t the only correct way to interpret that truth?” Hashirama was even closer now, and he still did nothing to assault Madara, to try and defeat the godly creature he was. He did raise his hand, however, ignoring the way the lingering flames of Amaterasu licked at his skin. He just needed to know if that alabaster skin was as cold as Madara’s words.

“We were happy once, you and I, for a little while. Was that not a union of Uchiha and Senju too?”

Madara was warm. Hashirama drew closer. His palm touched the pearly white skin of Madara’s cheek.

“I don’t want to fight you. I want to spend another lifetime understanding you. But not in a fake, hollow world. If that’s what you want, then give me back to death.”

Madara jerked when Hashirama touched him. His first instinct was to attack but his second, more overriding one was to lean into it. He hung in the middle of the two extremes, unwilling to commit. When he breathed out, it came out shaky.

“It didn’t last,” he murmured. “None of it lasted. We fought again, didn’t we? I wanted more than a lifetime. I wanted forever.”

The Juubi’s power roared inside him. Madara felt like a glass bottle trying to contain a hurricane. But he didn’t fight.

_Save this world… save it… save… it…_

“I just wanted peace,” Madara whispered.

He was so close to convincing Madara, he could feel it. This was exactly what he’d hoped for since he opened his mouth to speak with him. Yes…they didn’t have to fight. They could learn to understand each other again, and do something about whatever it was Madara had become with the Divine Tree. A lot of people had already died, but it wasn’t too late. 

Hashirama pulled him closer, leaned in until he felt Madara’s boney crest against his head.

“Then just stop this, and we can-”

“That’s enough, Madara.”

Madara stiffened as agony pulsed through his chest. He looked down in disbelief at the hand that’d punched through his chest. Some of it had gone through Hashirama’s armor. He couldn’t see if it went further. His eyes darted back. Zetsu.

“What are you doing…?” he gurgled, unable to move. The overpowering roar of the Juubi was silent. None of his overwhelming strength responded to him anymore. He struggled in vain, black blood slowly staining his white robe. “Zetsu, you…”

“I thought you would be more useful than this,” Zetsu said through Obito’s mouth. He looked beyond Madara, at Hashirama. “Ashura… you’ve always been such a bad influence on him. He was so pliant before.”

“I… made you,” Madara wheezed, breathing hard. Ever since he got his new body, he’d stopped feeling pain so clearly. But now, it was everything, a white spear of pain that shot through him with every failing breath. 

“You? No. Your will was never mine. It was always mother’s.”

Madara choked and lunged forward. He shoved Hashirama away as black veins exploded all over him, down his limbs and over his face, and he screamed, an inhuman noise of agony.

“Madara!”

It was no use; Hashirama could barely hear himself over the strained, broken screams escaping Madara’s mouth. Like a creature, like the Juubi, he didn’t sound like anything born of this world anymore.

Hashirama glanced down at the dark holes in his armour; those black fingertips had brushed his skin, burned it, but nothing more important than that. The damage was already healing away.

It was hard to tell what exactly he was looking at. Madara bled black, inky liquid.The enormous tree behind him tilted, inclined towards him, until it rapidly began to be sucked into Madara.

Hashirama drew level with Naruto and Sasuke again, ready to shield them should they need it. Madara paid him no mind anymore, but then again, it wasn’t really Madara anyway.

They murmured something, both of them. A name that Hashirama didn’t know. But the way they spoke it…

“Who’s coming? Who is Kaguya? What is happening?!”

The heavy chakra in the air solidified into a single point. The white mass that sucked it all in was no longer recognizable as human. It made no sound, no noise, just growing and shifting as some transformation took place.

Naruto and Sasuke moved to attack at the wrong time. From the hideous ruin that’d been Madara, Kaguya emerged.

Her sheer presence was crushing. She was the closest thing to god – or maybe she was god, the birth of all creation. Power radiated from her and pressed down on the last waking people on earth like a hot mist. The air around her shivered, reality itself warping to make a path for her.

“…Indra… Ashura…” she murmured, looking down at the two boys she’d slammed down. Her face was cold and pristine, as untouchable as the distant moon. “The sons… of my wicked child.”

There’d been no time to try and retrieve Madara; he disappeared before their eyes, absorbed, devoured by the white, fleshy mass that became her.

A goddess. A monster. Kaguya. 

She was stifling and glorious to behold. A pale, deceptively fragile-looking woman with eyes as cold and vast as the moon. Her presence completely eradicated Madara’s in every sense.

For a moment, Hashirama tried to process what was happening here, tried to put into perspective the scope of the master behind Madara’s strings. That this was the being that had driven a wedge into the world out of spite, or whatever her reason for existence was. 

And then, the boys attacked. Unfortunately for them, their blunt, head-on attack didn’t ruffle the goddess at all. Instead, they fell to her, and she scolded them like children. Would she kill them? Devour them and make them part of her power, like she’d done with Madara?

Hashirama could no longer afford to stand and try to work out the logic of the situation; he’d promised those boys some help with saving the world. He wouldn’t break that promise.

Kaguya’s eyes were still on the two boys in front her when Hashirama’s fist met her pristine face.

“You won’t lay another finger on them!” 

The blow made the goddess rock back, but only for a moment. Then all three of her eyes focused on him. Her attack whipped him away the same as it had Naruto and Sasuke, the ground cratering around him. Kaguya regarded him quietly, unsmiling.

“Ashura’s predecessor,” she murmured, “you look like him.” She gently touched her stomach, looking down. “You shouldn’t fight me. Your brother has already joined his mother.”

Rubble trickled down as Sasuke struggled to his feet. He groped around before he found Naruto’s hand. He pulled him up and stared up at Kaguya, who continued to watch the Shodaime.

She stroked her front in the same way pregnant women touched their bellies and spoke, “He was a good son who listened. Who obeyed. Be more like him.”

Hashirama emerged from the crater. This wasn’t a battle that called for giant summons or forests blooming around him. This was much more personal.

Kaguya’s words had a rare effect of sending his blood into a wild surge of anger. Nothing in his life-time had ever made Hashirama feel hatred. True, inspired hatred.

But here it was now, blooming as an ugly rage in his stomach, racing up his spine. Chakra spilled from him in wild bouts, careless of what destruction it might wreak.

“His name is Uchiha Madara,” He charged her again, though this time he avoided her attack in the fraction of a second, “and he does not belong to you!”

Hashirama took the brunt of her next attack, letting it blow the shattering armor off of him. He wouldn’t need it any longer anyway. He tasted a fresh swell of blood in his mouth. Her chakra alone was pummeling him, but Hashirama was made of sterner stuff than most. Bearing her assault gave him the opportunity to retaliate. This time he punched her in her oh-so-precious stomach.

Sasuke almost buckled from the exchange of power overhead. It wasn’t just that either – the ground kept cracking under his feet as trees surged into existence, all of them growing so fast that they crushed each other in their eager frenzy. The branches shot up towards the Shodaime, who was currently going toe-to-toe with a god.

So that’s what the First Hokage was like… Sasuke stared, transfixed. But his fascination didn’t last long. Grabbing Naruto, they moved to get out of the immediate danger zone. Kakashi had been right. They couldn’t run into this with no plan. They had to use the little time that the Shodaime bought them to think of something. Something dangerous.

Hashirama’s fist sunk into Kaguya’s stomach and for the first time ever, her perfect face distorted into a snarl. She didn’t have flesh, not really. She was just a sea of chakra that writhed chaotically, sucking on his flesh, trying to pull him in.

From somewhere deep inside her, a hand brushed against Hashirama’s fingers. It groped for him desperately, as if it was being pulled back by some great force.

Hashirama felt fingers brush his fist and he grabbed on. The white mass of chakra taken form pulled at his arm, tried to force him into the same, fleshy prison that Madara was trapped in, but he held steady.

One hand reached back, turned into wood and anchored somewhere in the dusty, dead earth as he heaved. This was his one chance and he wouldn’t waste it. 

Something was giving, a mass inside of the goddess, a living thing struggling to escape. Hashirama felt his skin begin to tear and he clenched his teeth, putting all of his strength into pulling.

With a sound as wet as dead wood pulled from a swamp, Madara emerged from the goddess that had devoured him. Propelled by Hashirama’s force, he fell forward, landing on Hashirama himself who landed on the ground with a solid crunch. His arm was bleeding and his bones ached.

Still, he would not let go of Madara.

“Indra…!” Kaguya clawed at her torn stomach, her nails dragging on Madara’s back as he was pulled out, and Sasuke saw his chance.

“Naruto, now!”

While the two men were occupied, the newly-armored Kyuubi swatted Kaguya aside. The boys followed her, granting some breathing space for Madara, who looked normal again. All the mutations of his monstrous form were gone, even the second face on his chest, and he looked smaller in the aftermath. Stripped down.

He raised himself up on trembling arms and dry heaved on the ground. His eyes were screwed shut, his shoulders shaking, and he didn’t register his surroundings as he quivered, breathing hard.

Kaguya disappeared in a swirling mass of chakra, battered away by the boys and their combined powers. 

Hashirama was grateful for the brief reprieve. He pushed himself up, vision blurry for a moment before it sharpened on Madara. Madara, who looked like himself, even if he was worse for wear. Madara…the poor fool instrument of this ancient architect’s work. 

Conflicting emotions raged through Hashirama. Anger, worry, doubt and questions about the entirety of Madara’s plan. Had it always been Kaguya’s will? If so, when had it begun? When Madara was still in the village, sequestered away with an ancient, carved stone? Or was it after, when he stole away into the world to follow a path of destruction?

Now wasn’t the time to speak about it, but there was more than that. Guilt, a prominent force among the storm of emotion. Guilt that he hadn’t seen any signs of her influence. Even if he couldn’t have known, it felt like a betrayal that he hadn’t felt the grasp of ancient madness on his dear friend.

Freeing him now didn’t make up for that, but the two of them could hardly now afford to withdraw and lick their wounds.

“Madara…” he rasped, kneeling by him, touching his back with his unharmed hand, “can you hear me?” 

He flinched away from him. His eyes snapped open and he stared at Hashirama, not fully registering what he was seeing. Then horror flooded his face and he grabbed his chest, right where Zetsu’s hand had gone through him.

“I’m… out…?” he muttered, disbelieving. His fingers brushed the thin, flat scar over his heart. “I was wrong… all this time, I was wrong…”

Madara sucked in a deep, rattling breath and buried his face in his hands.

The despair in his voice and the disbelief in his eyes were enough for Hashirama. He reached out and folded Madara into his arms, ignoring the ache in his arm and chest.

“It…finally makes sense,” he muttered into coarse hair, pressing Madara to himself as if his life depended on it. The guilty burden shifted from his shoulders and he could finally breathe easy, even if the battle was far from over. It felt like he’d taken the first step to a recovery he didn’t know possible.

Madara stiffened when he was hugged. When nothing else happened, he reluctantly relaxed. Everything was jumbled to him, half of him in the outside world, half of him still stuck inside the sea of chakra, and he couldn’t figure out which was real and which was not. But something glimmered through the confusion. He grasped the thin golden thread and let it lead him to the smell of spring.

“… Hashirama…” he murmured. He pressed his hand on his chest and felt the strong, steady beat of his heart. “You pulled me free.”

His own voice sounded distant to his ears. His head dropped to his shoulder and suddenly Madara embraced him fiercely, desperate to hold onto the only anchor in sight.

“I’ve got you.” Hashirama held on just as tightly, grateful that this had happened, that he’d managed to save Madara, this time.

They were still in the middle of the end of the world, but Hashirama couldn’t care, for these precious seconds where he had gotten his friend, his love, back in his arms. They were alive, two beating hearts, racing to keep up with each other, anchoring each other, tethering them to life.

“I won’t let you go this time.”

For a moment, Madara wanted to do nothing else but sink into the warmth of Hashirama’s arms and forget the rest of existence. He would’ve dearly liked to just stop thinking and let him be the only thing that mattered, and for a few seconds, he let himself be weak.

He’d never realized how light his shoulders were until the burden of Zetsu was finally lifted from them. The frantic pace of his thoughts felt slower now too. Was that because of his near-death or was it because he no longer had a second voice in his head that pushed him to grasp the world and squeeze?

Just how long had Kaguya controlled him?

“I suppose this means,” he said, sitting up, his head bowed, “that what I wanted was always impossible.”

Disappointed was too gentle a word for what he felt. He’d spent his entire life working for a dream that’d turned out to be false. It was like a part of him had been carved out by the truth, leaving a gaping black emptiness behind.

“No, not at all.” Hashirama wouldn’t miss his chance to speak with Madara now. They might only have seconds before they could no longer afford to spend their time talking to one another, and he would make it count.

He freed one hand from Madara’s back to grasp his chin, bring his face up. This face of a man who had influenced every minute of Hashirama’s life. Who had brought him his highs and lows, who owned Hashirama’s heart beyond life and death. His gift from the divine, who never once was the curse he must think himself to be.

“You were always on the right path, Madara. I never…believed that you didn’t want peace. Now, I finally understand what brought you to that path I couldn’t follow. I can’t absolve you of blame, but I can see now that you were lead. That thing…Kaguya, she used you. And I am sorry I didn’t know it. But your dream…it was still the same as mine, my love. I will never not believe in that, or you.”

“Always the optimist,” Madara huffed, but he said it fondly. He examined Hashirama’s hopeful face. Even battered as he was, dragged through battle after battle, having survived the end of the world, he looked steady.

Madara felt a pang of yearning. He missed how close they used to be, how good it felt to have someone to lean on. When they stood together, there was nothing that could stop them.

“… maybe I should’ve been more like you,” he finally said. He reached up and grabbed Hashirama’s hand. It was warm, living flesh, the same hands he’d loved and held over a century ago. He pressed his lips on his rough knuckles and kissed them, his eyes stinging with unshed tears. “The only right thing I did was bringing you back.”

“Oh, Madara,” Hashirama held him close, listened to the fragility in his voice. Here was the man he’d lost over a century ago, still that good heart inside of that wild exterior.

“There’s still things for you to do. It’s not too late for us to fix it. The world’s still here, and now, so are we.”

They needed to help the boys. They didn’t have time to break down now.

Madara squeezed his hand, then let go. “You’re right,” he said, standing up. He pulled Hashirama up with him and didn’t let go. “We need to deal with Kaguya first before she overwhelms those two.”

In the distance, he saw the glowing Kyuubi fighting Kaguya as best it could. despite their age, they were doing surprisingly well. But they had to enter the fray soon because even now, he could see signs of weariness coming from them.

Madara squeezed Hashirama’s hand briefly. They were going to fight the strongest thing in all creation, the creature that’d nearly consumed him, and yet he didn’t feel any fear in his heart. He couldn’t, not when he stood with Hashirama. Everything was possible with him.

Madara took a deep breath and smoothed out the jaggedness of his distress. There would come time for that later. “I love you.”

Hashirama’s face softened one last time for Madara as he glanced at him, smiled. He didn’t need to say anything, didn’t need to answer. Madara knew. And now that they finally understood each other and their purpose, there was nothing that would stand in their way. Trusting Madara was like slipping into an old, well-worn glove. It fit, it was comfortable, it felt like home.

“Then let’s go dance with a goddess, hm?”

His chakra bolted brightly around them as he made the seals for the Shinsu Senju. He trusted Madara knew exactly what to do. 

The ground trembled under the feet as Kaguya slowly overpowered the glowing fox in the distance. Its armor was torn in places, half its flames missing, and it no longer moved as sharply as it did. The two brats had put up an impressive fight but they were tiring.

“They’re not bad for their age,” Madara begrudgingly admitted as his own chakra began to bloom around him. He spread his hands slowly and his chakra burst up in a bright tower of light. His hair lifted from his shoulders and his eyes gleamed with a new, calculating intensity. “But they still have a few things to learn from their elders.”

Stone shrieked as the Mokuton forced it apart for the umpteenth time that day. Mountains were shoved aside, the battlefield split in half, the forbidding silence of the dreaming world overrun by the cacophony of the forest. Wood warped, creaked, and joined to form limbs, a head, a body, the two of them surging up higher as the Buddha took shape underfoot.

Madara didn’t waste a second. He formed the Ram seal and chakra exploded from his body, raced down the wood, and devoured the Buddha as it grew. The fires roared higher as burning armor curled around the construct and two massive ghostly arms formed, holding swords that shined so brightly they hurt to look upon. Sparks dripped from where the flames licked the wood but did not burn it and it took a step, the earth collapsed under its vast weight.

The Buddha’s peaceful face was the last to be swallowed up. When it reappeared, it was covered by a snarling warrior god’s mask. Fangs spiraled from its open mouth and its eyes glared ominously. It towered over everything, bigger than even the limping Kyuubi, the peak of destructive power.

Madara looked at Hashirama. In the alien glow of his flames, surrounded by the burning, singing harmony of their ultimate techniques, he looked like a king. He smiled before turning back to Kaguya.

“Let’s see if she can keep up,” Madara said and the Buddha swung its sword and cut a canyon into the world.


End file.
